


Across the Drift

by paperchimes



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, M/M, Short Prologue, Unrequited! Jenny Lind love for P. T. Barnum, will eventually lead to a larger fic and verse with slow burn Barlyle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 14:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14570649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperchimes/pseuds/paperchimes
Summary: Phillip Carlyle was not the co-pilot Barnum would consider his first choice. But with the end of the world knocking on their door, perhaps he’d need to make him the one exception.





	Across the Drift

Pinpricks of light pierced through the deep, blue blanket that enveloped her vision. She felt the caress of fingertips drifting across the sting of her own open wounds tightly wrapped in bandages. The gentle hum of machinery filled the cold air spacing her from the holographic graphs and numbers that covered the room. They burned, relentlessly stark, and telling a story she could not decipher to the mysterious white coats that flickered in and out of her room with each day that passed. It took her days - or what had  _ felt _ like days - to be able to soberly discern one doctor from the last, and one nurse from the anaesthetician. Big silver needle: Dr Ross. Smaller needle: Dr Brown. Comforting hand?

_ My love…? _

“I’m afraid I’d have to disappoint, Ms Lind,” the soft whisper crept through the cracks in the bleak, black wall of her psyche, Jenny was made to feel as if she had discovered a shimmering vein of diamonds glistening in the dark. The more-than-familiar voice of a love long lost began to coax her from the reinforced castle she had shied away into. Each step she was encouraged to take beyond her walls rang within her a pain she thought she had buried a lifetime ago. 

Until now.

“You’ve done nothing but, Mr Barnum,” the sound that erupted from her throat was not a pleasing one. The reminder of her mangled voicebox was a dagger that twisted into the folds of her gut and she feels the  _ rage _ . Truly, the disparity of it all was the largest insult, and she finds herself disgusted that the tattered remains of her conviction were not enough to satiate the hunger that boiled in the beast that tore her Jaeger apart.

A full-force Kaiju attack could do many things to a pilot. And Jenny had to discover in the hardest way possible that perhaps, a ten out of ten take-down ratio does not guarantee that God was always on one’s side.

Sometimes when she shut her eyes, she could still see  _ him _ , his ethereal form wrapped in the laces and mist of deep Drift blue.

“Ms Lind, I implore you, your country is in need,”  _ he  _ spoke again. At this, the thrum of machinery rose to a crescendo of heartbeats, her anguish translated with piecing clarity across the circuits. Barnum’s grasp never wavered from the gentle hold he had on her marked hands, not even when she tried to pull away. “You have been trapped for months now, but now, you are  _ free _ .” A moment. He chose this moment to catch his breath. Jenny took that moment to realise how long she had been away. “Do you not know what this means?” 

“More than you do, Mr Barnum,” her reply drifted above the incessant beeps she wished had ceased long ago. The insides of her chest felt as if they had been replaced with thorns. “Hear me clearly when I say this: 

“I will not pilot again.” 

Perhaps it had been the finality of her voice that had inspired him to take his leave. Or perhaps, it had been something he had seen swimming in the tears that had begun to overflow from her eyes. Irregardless, the next moment, Jenny found herself receiving what she truly desired and deserved after all that had torn at her from the moment she first stepped into the deceivingly embrace of the Drift:

Solitude.

And for the first time in her life, she was at  _ peace _ . 


End file.
